[Nettime-bold] Max Herman Speaks Out Re: <nettime> Behind the Blip: Software as Culture

[Nmherman@aol.com]

In a message dated 1/7/2002 4:55:31 PM Central Standard Time, matt@axia.demon.co.uk writes:


> The book is at once a rescue of philosophy from its status as doomed
> elite subculture staffed by the populations of the soon-to-be closed
> ghost departments of the universities of Europe, but also as a
> restatement of the primary task of philosophy: the invention of
> concepts.  In order to state their case for this, they need to clear
> the decks of other ways in which the term is used.  One of the problems
> facing their use of this term is, they see, that:
>
> "In successive challenges, philosophy faced increasingly insolent and
> calamitous rivals that Plato himself would have never imagined in his
> most comic moments.  Finally the most shameful moment came when
> computer science, marketing, design and advertising, all the
> disciplines of communication, seized hold of the word concept itself
> and said: 'This is our concern, we are the creative ones, we are the
> ideas men!  we are the friends of the concept, we put it in our
> computers."'17



For one, I know a certain Platonist who says "there are no such thing as concepts."  I can't say for sure if he's right, but he might be.  If he is, it will add one more layer to the D&G discussion of concepts.  What are concepts?  What is philosophy?  

D&G are talking about creating life, what is mind-life, what is the practitioner practicing.  

Genius 2000 is of course an excellent expert on the ideas of generation and birth.  It's one of our main studies.  Thus has a direct academic lineage been found between D&G and G2K.  Hundreds of G2K Phd's are now officially in order.  (Consider G2K to be an advanced revision and correction of D&G as they are widely interpreted.)  If there are any students on this list, I guarantee you will get an A if you write such a paper.  Any teachers onlist?  You could assign the essay and make your students famous.

As for any reasonable discussion of Fuller's post, recently on Max Herman Free Zone Thingserver, I will leave it among you all, but I think Fuller lacks concision and overall G2K context regarding a few issues.  These include 1.  What does it mean to create concepts;  2.  Some of Fuller's message seems insufficiently though clumsily messianic;  3.  Not to mention that software culture is already well in place quite firmly;  4.  I find his implicit call for "a new kind of intellectual" redolent of academia's most chafing periodic rejuvenations;  5.  But hey he's certainly talking about some ideas relevant to Genius 2000, like new systematic redefinitions of the histor, network analyst, concept-creator, genius, etc., and may have found an excellent D&G quote to use in my PhD.

Gor' bless us all,

Max Herman

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